Why is pingback / trackback a good design? Why isn't the referer [sic] header the way to automatically track pages that link to you? I was thinking of writing a pingback server for .NET, but on closer look, it seems inelegant. I only had a few hours sleep last night / this …

Friday Five:

1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year?

Writing Thinking in C#, a 1,000-page technical book. Although I started it in September of 2001, I did 80% of the work in 2002. * *

2. What was your biggest disappointment?

Despite having the content of Thinking in C# essentially …

MS Must Ship Sun's Java

Mmmm.... DirectX from C#...

According to the Register, Microsoft is lining up to buy Macromedia. It's Flash they want. via [Scripting News]

Ah, now this makes sense. Not because of the anti-J2EE nonsense in the Register article, but 90% because of Flash and 10% because of Cold Fusion. The Price:Book ratio for Macromedia …

Joe Strummer, RIP. The one time I saw Joe Strummer in concert was when he was singing vocals for The Pogues. Oh man, that was a good concert. Well, I guess I know what's on the turntable today...

DirectX 9 Released. Including managed libraries and C# support! Woo-hooo! Note that you have to download not just the DirectX for C# SDK, but the DirectX SDK 9.0 Developer Runtime in order to get the Managed Direct X (MDX) libraries.

But that doesn't mean I'm not happy to see you, too

The LAT notes the conviction this week of a man who smuggled rare monkeys into the U.S.--in his pants. Upon discovering four endangered birds and 50 exotic orchids in his suitcase, officials at Los Angeles International Airport …

Web server statistics: JSP fastest growing server-side scripting language, 1% of ASP.NET servers running on Linux. Interesting stuff from Netcraft.

Elcomsoft acquitted. Even though I sell Thinking in C# via Adobe Acrobat and therefore am vulnerable to piracy of my intellectual property, I am happy for this verdict. I don't know what is a fair policy towards digital media, but the DMCA ain't it.